✅ My Sister's Problem

113. The Last Challenge

This bonus chapter is dedicated to babysofia1234, with thanks for all the support you have given me. Thank you!

I jogged easily out of the field where the marathon had started, and turned through the ceremonial archway. This was where the race would finish as well, so there would be people working to tidy everything up as soon as the ten minute buffer for late starters was over. The arch was some fancy thing that looked like it might have come from the front gate of some dark lord's castle or something. It was made from two giant bones, carved a hundred years before to mark the prosperity of the town. I thought I'd heard that they were bones from a whale or something; they were certainly big. But in the last few years I'd never found the time to check on the legend. Perhaps this year, I would remember to look for the little plaque after we finished, and actually read it for a change.

After the archway, almost everybody turned right and headed down the old main street. There were rough cobbles underfoot, with straw spread over them to soak up any summer rain because they could be treacherous when wet. That was why the shop fronts along here were now mostly decorative; the architecture maintained only for those buildings that had enough historic value to attract donations. The actual shops had their fronts on the other size, and the windows and ornate doorways here were like a still life of what the town used to look like.

There wasn't much time to pay attention as we ran past. I was still going at a light jog, trying to get my breathing into a decent rhythm. That was the key to a race like this, I had found. The course would snake out of town along the pedestrian routes, and then mostly follow closed roads as it looped around the outside, circling round two towns in a figure eight pattern. It wasn't an actual marathon, and I was pretty confident I would finish in less than two hours, but it really was a long distance. If I pushed myself too hard at the start then I wouldn't make it to the end, or would be struggling even to walk. It was all about finding a pace that I could keep up for a couple of hours, and then sticking to it regardless of what everyone else was doing.

But I did find time to look up. Some of these old storefronts had balconies; or even flat roofs with chairs set out for the artists. People painting pictures of the runners because they didn't have the fitness to race themselves. I wondered if Lindy was up there now. I wanted her to join the marathon, and I'd been pretty confident that she would, but there was a chance that she was still drawing, painting, or doing something creative. If she was planning to do race art, I would have expected her to have started well before the marathon; I'd never known her to do a whole picture in less than a couple of hours, and her archery attempts would surely not have left enough time for her to finish a picture before the final judging.

I looked up, and tried to make her out among the different people watching us. But I didn't see her; she was probably in the crowd of runners somewhere, although I had no idea which side of me she would be on. She could have run ahead and worn herself out, or she could have been following somewhere behind me. I figured that there was no sense worrying about it; I would see her at home, and we could compare our results. All I could do now was finish the marathon, and do the best I could.

As we left the cobbled streets at the far end of town, there were people cheering along the side of the track. But not so many of them; they were outnumbered by the people actually running. Everybody tried to take part in the marathon, even if they were walking for the second half. The spectators were people who weren't sporty or didn't have the stamina for it, and I think there weren't many people who wouldn't have given it a try if they thought they could.

And then we were on the main ring road, with the town to our right. Here the ground was more even, and a lot of people were picking up speed. I timed my stride to my breathing, trying to use that to judge how fast I was going. A lot of people were ahead of me now, but I knew from past experience that the sooner someone got out of the town, the less likely they were to finish the course. There would be a couple of cars coming along behind us to pick up all the people who had given up and taken a seat on the ground, or on the barriers at the edge of the road.